In Which We Discuss the BBC's List of the Nation's Hundred Best-Loved Novels

The Telegraph do not describe how they came to their list of 100 Novels Everyone Should Read (which I discussed here). The BBC, on the other hand, are a lot more transparent. They did a survey to find the nation's hundred favourite novels. I'm going to go through the list (and how many of them I've read) below, in handy groups of ten.

1. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien [ ]
2. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen [X]
3. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman [X]
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams [X]
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling [X]
6. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee [X]
7. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne [X]
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four  George Orwell [X]
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis [X]
10. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë [X]

 I like this list better already.  Though it seems ridiculous that the His Dark Materials series gets it's own entry while the Harry Potter books are all listed separately.

1. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller [ ]
2. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë [ ]
3. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks [ ]
4. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier [X]
5. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger [ ]
6. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame [ ]
7. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens [ ]
8. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott [X]
9. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres [ ]
10. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [ ]

Wuthering Heights is another of those that I've been meaning to read for ages.  I think I'm afraid that it won't live up to the dreadfully romantic stereotype that it has, and I'll find it tawdry and flimsy.  That said, I had that exact fear about Lorna Doone, and Lorna Doone is wonderful.

1. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell [ ]
2. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone - JK Rowling [X]
3. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets - JK Rowling [X]
4. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban - JK Rowling [X]
5. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien [ ]
6. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy [X]
7. Middlemarch - George Eliot [ ]
8. A Prayer For Owen Meany - John Irving [ ]
9. The Grapes Of Wrath - John Steinbeck [ ]
10. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll [X]

I'm not a big fan of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  I've read at least one description about girls who read which talks about how we all love that, and Austen, and Little Women, and Lord of the Rings, and fuck off, no we don't.

I am becoming tired and grumpy.

1. The Story Of Tracy Beaker - Jacqueline Wilson [X]
2. One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez [ ]
3. The Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follett [ ]
4. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens [ ]
5. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl [X]
6. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson [X]
7. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute [ ]
8. Persuasion - Jane Austen [ ]
9. Dune - Frank Herbert [ ]
10. Emma - Jane Austen [ ]

Still can't abide Austen.

1. Anne Of Green Gables - LM Montgomery [X]
2. Watership Down - Richard Adams [ ]
3. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald [ ]
4. The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas [ ]
5. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [ ]
6. Animal Farm - George Orwell [X]
7. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens [X]
8. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy [ ]
9. Goodnight Mister Tom - Michelle Magorian [X]
10. The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher [ ]

That's the first fifty, and I've read 23 of them.  Much better.  I'll continue writing this post later, when I have stopped being so very grumpy.

Right.  It's later.

1. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett [X]
2. Of Mice And Men - John Steinbeck [X]
3. The Stand - Stephen King [ ]
4. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy [ ]
5. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth [ ]
6. The BFG - Roald Dahl [X]
7. Swallows And Amazons - Arthur Ransome [ ]
8. Black Beauty - Anna Sewell [ ]
9. Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [X]
10. Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky [ ]

 I had a copy of Swallows and Amazons when I was nine or ten.  God knows what happened to it.  I remember starting it, but don't think I ever finished.

1. Noughts And Crosses - Malorie Blackman [X]
2. Memoirs Of A Geisha - Arthur Golden [X]
3. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens [ ]
4. The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCollough [ ]
5. Mort - Terry Pratchett [X]
6. The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton [X]
7. The Magus - John Fowles [ ]
8. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman [X]
9. Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett [X]
10. Lord Of The Flies - William Golding [X]

I had a copy of A Tale of Two Cities as a child, too.  I think my sister and I used it for scrap paper before we learned how to read.

1. Perfume - Patrick Süskind [X]
2. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell [ ]
3. Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [X]
4. Matilda - Roald Dahl [X]
5. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding [X]
6. The Secret History - Donna Tartt [ ]
7. The Woman In White - Wilkie Collins [ ]
8. Ulysses - James Joyce [ ]
9. Bleak House - Charles Dickens [ ]
10. Double Act - Jacqueline Wilson [X]

I loved Double Act when I was eight or nine.  I remember reading that and The Suitcase Kid over and over.

1. The Twits - Roald Dahl [X]
2. I Capture The Castle - Dodie Smith [X]
3. Holes - Louis Sachar [ ]
4. Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake [ ]
5. The God Of Small Things - Arundhati Roy [ ]
6. Vicky Angel - Jacqueline Wilson [X]
7. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley [ ]
8. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons [ ]
9. Magician - Raymond E Feist [ ]
10. On The Road - Jack Kerouac [ ]

I Capture the Castle  is in my top ten.

1. The Godfather - Mario Puzo [X]
2. The Clan Of The Cave Bear - Jean M Auel [ ]
3. The Colour Of Magic - Terry Pratchett [X]
4. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho [ ]
5. Katherine - Anya Seton [ ]
6. Kane And Abel - Jeffrey Archer [ ]
7. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez [X]
8. Girls In Love - Jacqueline Wilson [X]
9. The Princess Diaries - Meg Cabot [X]
10. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [ ]

I loved The Godfather, which surprised me, because I couldn't sit through the film.

Out of those hundred, I've read 47.  So I'm not well read by The Telegraph's standards, but I'm in tune with the general tastes of Britain, according to the BBC.  Good to know!